Chapter 68: The Engine II

Joe began testing strength privately by the second week.

The freight frame in Edwin’s warehouse had become useful at last.

Muscle actually produced the quality the frame measured.

He waited until late evening when the warehouse workers had gone and Edwin was at home. The rear loading area smelled faintly of dried medicinal bark and lamp oil, with winter cold leaking through the stone despite the doors being shut.

Joe loaded three hundred kilograms.

Lift.

Easy.

Three fifty.

Controlled.

Three eighty.

Harder.

He adjusted.

Around three hundred ninety kilograms, the lift remained clean enough that he could complete it without ugly compensation.

He stopped there.

Not because he was at absolute maximum.

Because maximum was not necessary.

Early Muscle Tempering.

Approximately three hundred ninety kilograms in a controlled whole-body lift.

That gave him something useful.

The number was noticeably higher than before dedicated Muscle development, but not absurd.

Good.

He lowered the freight frame, returned the weights and left no indication anyone had used it.

On the walk home, he thought about the difference between Skin and Muscle.

Skin Great Completion had made him extraordinarily difficult to damage externally compared with an ordinary Skin practitioner.

Yet it had not secretly given him enormous lifting strength.

Muscle was now changing the number after only weeks.

That clarified the body beautifully.

Skin is armor. Muscle is the engine.

Simple.

He liked simple when it remained true.

?

Deepwinter loosened its grip.

The first sign was not warmth.

It was mud.

Snow melted along the roads during afternoon, mixed with cart dirt, then froze again overnight. Guards began mornings walking over hard ridges and returned through brown slush. Roofs dripped. Market sellers shifted goods away from gutters. The river broke apart along the edges where thin ice had formed.

Joe’s first Muscle Tempering continued through that ugly transition.

He began incorporating controlled dynamic work.

Slow weighted steps.

Loaded turns.

Short accelerations.

Pulling movements.

Pushing movements.

Nothing explosive enough to endanger joints that had not yet benefited from Bone Tempering.

Static Foundation remained invaluable.

It made starting positions precise.

Dynamic Foundation was not yet perfected at this point, but years of practice still helped Joe transition between positions without wasting large amounts of force.

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Muscle improvement made every movement feel more immediate.

The body answered faster.

That did not mean he moved recklessly.

If anything, stronger muscle made caution more necessary.

The force he could generate was beginning to rise faster than the tissues that had to contain it.

Joe noticed the first hints of that in the knees and wrists during loaded practice.

Not pain.

Pressure.

A reminder.

Bone would matter later.

For now, he kept intensity within safe limits.

-------

Guard work prevented cultivation from becoming his entire life.

Simon’s team still included Daren Holt and Cole Merrick, and Joe remained attached closely enough at this stage that he joined routine work more frequently than he would later.

One afternoon, the four of them escorted a medicine wagon from Edwin’s district to a storage yard near the eastern gate.

The snow had mostly melted from the main roads, though piles remained against shaded walls. The wagon wheels splashed through shallow water every time they crossed a gutter. Merchants were already preparing for spring caravans, and several warehouses had opened their large doors to air out winter damp.

Cole walked beside the rear wheel.

He looked at Joe.

Then looked again.

Joe ignored him.

Cole continued looking.

Daren finally said, “Ask.”

Cole frowned. “Ask what?”

“Whatever stupid thing you’ve been trying to decide whether to ask for the last three streets.”

Simon smiled without turning.

Cole looked offended. “It isn’t stupid.”

Daren waited.

Cole looked at Joe. “Did you get heavier?”

Joe blinked.

“No.”

Cole studied him.

“You look heavier.”

“That sentence makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense.”

Simon finally looked back. “He means broader.”

Cole pointed. “Yes.”

Joe considered.

Muscle development had begun changing his physique slightly. Perfect Body prevented excessive bulk, but shoulders, thighs and back were becoming denser.

“Training,” Joe said.

Cole nodded knowingly. “Muscle.”

“Yes.”

“See?”

Daren looked at him. “You identified the realm everyone already knew he was training.”

Cole ignored him. “How much are you eating?”

Simon laughed.

Joe looked at his brother.

“You told them.”

“I mentioned a household concern.”

“It is not a concern.”

Simon looked at Daren. “He ate tomorrow’s breakfast once.”

“I did not.”

Mira had made the same accusation weeks earlier.

Simon grinned. “You remember exactly which incident I mean.”

“That does not make it true.”

Daren shook his head. “Young men discover Muscle and suddenly every conversation becomes food.”

Cole said, “How much did you eat when you started?”

“Less than him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know because I wasn’t terrifying kitchens.”

Joe sighed.

They continued toward the eastern yard while Simon and Cole debated how much meat should qualify as unreasonable.

Daren stayed beside Joe.

After a while he said quietly, “Let them talk. Better than listening to Simon complain about reports.”

Joe nodded.

Ahead, Simon immediately turned. “I heard that.”

“Good.”

Joe smiled.

Small conversations like that mattered more than he realized at the time.

Years later, the names Daren and Cole would carry weight.

For now, they were simply men walking beside a medicine wagon through snowmelt while arguing about food.

?

The first complete Muscle Tempering arrived as the season changed.

Spring did not announce itself dramatically. One week the trees outside Blackwood remained bare. The next, tiny green buds appeared along the lower branches. Rain replaced snow. The western hills gained a faint haze of color that deepened almost daily.

Joe knew the bodily Completion had arrived before checking anything.

The entire muscular system responded differently.

Not Great Completion.

Nothing like Skin IX.

This was ordinary first Completion.

Enough.

Major muscle groups recruited cleanly. Recovery had improved. Flexibility remained. Short bursts of force no longer produced the uneven fatigue he remembered from the first sessions.

Joe waited several days before using the freight frame again.

Same warehouse.

Same precautions.

Four hundred kilograms.

Clean.

Four twenty.

Still clean.

Four forty.

Hard.

Controlled.

Joe completed the lift and lowered it carefully.

He rested.

Considered attempting four fifty.

Then decided against it.

He did not need a theatrical maximum.

Around four hundred forty kilograms under controlled conditions was enough to establish the new baseline.

An ordinary first-completed Muscle layer in his body.

Joe stood beside the freight frame, breathing steadily.

That number felt useful in a way Skin measurements never had.

This was what Muscle did.

Force.

He flexed one hand.

Skin Great Completion protected the hand wrapping the bar.

Muscle Completion generated the pull.

Different layers.

Different functions.

Interacting without becoming interchangeable.

--------

Joe walked home through early spring rain.

Blackstone reflected lantern light beneath his feet. Water trickled along the gutters. Somewhere ahead, an eating house opened its door and released a burst of warm air carrying the smell of broth and roasted meat into the street.

He was hungry again.

Of course.

He bought food.

Then kept walking.

His thoughts remained on the first Muscle Completion.

For almost anyone else, this would have been the point to prepare for Bone.

Completion meant sufficient development.

Move on.

Efficient.

Reasonable.

Joe now had evidence that “sufficient” and “maximum under Blood Energy” were not necessarily the same thing.

Skin had taught him that.

The question was whether Muscle followed the same rule.

He did not know.

One layer did not establish a universal law.

Skin was external tissue.

Muscle was different.

Perhaps repeated Muscle Tempering would produce ordinary diminishing returns forever. Perhaps the ninth pass would do nothing unusual. Perhaps Muscle would stop responding at five or seven.

Joe smiled faintly as rain tapped against his hood.

Good.

He preferred not knowing.

Not knowing meant the next experiment could still teach him something.

He would begin the second Muscle tempering after recovery.

Then the third.

Then as far as the evidence is justified.

No sacred number.

No certainty.

Just the same rule he had used with Skin.

Continuing while improvement remained meaningful.

Observe.

Do not assume.

And if Muscle ever reached the strange state Joe privately called Great Completion, then he would have something more important than another stronger layer.

He would have the beginning of a pattern.